Fifty-one countries signed the Multilateral Competent Authority
Agreement in Berlin on Oct. 29 to fight offshore tax fraud and evasion.
The agreement aims to put an end to banking secrecy by sharing
tax-related information with member states.
Missing from the signatory list are the United States and China.
China’s absence seems somewhat strange given its global “fox hunt” for
corrupt officials who have fled the country.

Recently, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced that based on purchasing power parity (PPP) calculations, China’s 2014 gross domestic product (GDP) will be $17.6 trillion, surpassing the U.S. GDP of $17.4 trillion.

The various resistant movements that took place in Tibet, Xinjiang and Hong Kong in recent years showed that the Chinese government is facing severe regional governance crises. Despite the central government in Beijing exercising strict economic controls over those regions and implementing powerful stability maintenance measures there, the three places became increasingly unstable. Why? This is decided by the characteristics of and the way totalitarianism works.

By He Qinglian on September 3, 2014
Source article in Chinese: 南辕北辙的中国外资政策

Given that international capitals have yet to find an investment alternative to China, the country's policy toward foreign investment is a matter to which people pay close attention. On September 10, at the World Economic Forum held in Tianjin, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang delivered a speech pledging that China would further open its door to foreign investment：—

“We oppose all forms of protectionism...we adhere to practicing a more proactive opening strategy.”

By He Qinglian on August 28, 2014
Source article in Chinese: 中国经济下滑并非缘于反腐

China's economy is in the process of going downward, the HSBC Flash PMI for August slipped to 50.3, lower than the final value of 51.7 in July. What is rather odd though, is the explanations for this that people came up with. The Wall Street Journal for instance, published a number of reports such as “China's Top Graft Buster, Wang Qishan, Probing Thousands—Anti-Corruption Drive Headed by a Heavy-Handed Communist Party Loyalist” citing analyses made by investment bank economists that heavy-handed anti-corruption campaign would cost 0.6% to 1.5% in China's GDP growth this year.

It's been a year after Xi Jiping and Wang Qishan launched an anti-corruption campaign, the results are impressive. So far, more than 30 officials of provincial, ministerial, or higher levels have been punished, exceeding the total number of officials removed from office during the decade of the Hu-Wen era.

However, this anti-corruption campaign encounters far more troubles than any such campaigns in the past.

It is a hidden rule generally observed by the international business sector and investment banks that for the sake of interests, kowtowing to Beijing, whether willingly or reluctantly, would be necessary. This hidden rule is later observed also by the education sector, the hundreds of China-funded Confucian Institutes that opened up in universities around the globe are one example.

But what has taken me aback is that even the freedom of speech of American high school students is infringed and constrained by this hidden rule.

By He Qinglian on May 8, 2014
Source article in Chinese: 为中国房市续命的“三口气”

For years, people who warned about the burst of China's property market bubble appeared as if they were crying wolves. The state of the property business in the first quarter this year, however, showed that the wolves might really come this time because the three factors that helped keep China's real property market afloat might cease to be effective. These three factors are: local governments' reliance on land finance; real property companies' interests; and the collective actions owners took to resist the reduction of property prices.

It was until after I watched Jia Zhengke's A Touch of Sin, which original name in Chinese meant “predestined”, that I realized why he gave the film such a fatalistic name.

This is a film depicting four incidents that happened in China, the occurrence of each of them caused a serious rift in the country. And it should be noted that these four incidents took place between 2001 and 2010, a decade that was most crucial in determining the sociopolitical direction of China. In this ten years, the social distribution pattern became stagnant; the relationship between the people and the government changed from mutual trust to mutual distrust.

At the moment, Russia stations 100,000 troops at Northern, Southern and Eastern borders of Ukraine to intimidate that country. With the achievement of getting Crimea to join the Russian Federation, Putin is already seen by the Russian people as the hero who brings their country back onto the world stage, regardless of whether he takes further actions against Ukraine. And regardless of whether the international community would welcome Russia's return to the world stage, Putinism—which practices authoritarian rule at home and power politics abroad—has already taken shape.

Translated by Fenny Li and Tan Hohua. Written in English by Gisela Sommer.
This translation was first published in the Epoch Times.

Every year, the highlight of the “two sessions” is the “government
work report.” This year, however, it was somewhat different. After the
report was released, it was a bit unconvincing to break out into a mood
of optimism and celebration.
With no other choices, Xinhua News Agency published an interview with
the director of China’s National Development and Reform Commission Xu
Shaoshi, titled: “Rebutting the New Round of Gloomy Economic
Predictions, China’s Economy Now Undergoes Steady Development.”
The article served to announce to the world that the Chinese economy
is now completely dependent on the world’s confidence in China. If
confidence is high, China’s economy will turn out to be good. If the
gloomy outlook prevails, China’s economy will steer toward recession.
In fact, whether China’s economy will be good or bad depends entirely
on the fundamental factors of China’s economy itself. Currently,
China’s economic outlook is not optimistic, be it the real economy or
the fictitious economy, i.e. the financial systems. That is why, when
the work report tries to cover every aspect of the economy, problems
will pop up everywhere, just as in the old Chinese saying: it’s like
“trying to press down fleas with one’s ten fingers.”

Following the March 1 incident in Kunming, there was a marked rift in public opinion on the matter. While people in mainland China almost unanimously lashed out at the terrorism of Xinjiang Independent advocates, more Chinese came to understand that the incident was an inevitable outcome of the protracted repressive stability maintenance measures the Communist authority employed in Xinjiang.

By He Qinglian on February 15, 2014
Source article in Chinese: 何清涟：谁绑架了中国经济？

Of late Chinese media outlets are mentioning ever more frequently that other countries are staging a “currency war”. In articles claiming “China has become the victim of the Japanese Yen devaluation” and the like, they argued that many countries raced to lower the value of their own currencies to maintain an edge in their own foreign trade and thus moved China’s cheese. At the same time, these media outlets praised the Chinese government’s effort in maintaining the stability of RMB.

These articles made people inside the trade wonder why does Beijing not depreciate the Chinese currency to stimulate export like other countries did?

During the House Intelligence
Committee Hearing held on February 4, United States Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper said that China's aggressive
pursuit of territorial claims in the seas of East Asia is driven by a
sense of historical destiny. That remark is only half correct. It is
true that China is seeking to expand its territorial sovereignty. But
to see that as “driven by a sense of historical destiny” is being
misled by China's rhetoric. The truth is, China's expansion impulse
comes from continued population growth while its local
resources dwindle, the Malthusian catastrophe from which the country has no
escape.

By He Qinglian on Jan 5, 2014
Source Article in Chinese: 土地治污：中国学日本经验之难

On the New Year’s Eve, Wang Shiyuan, Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR), made an announcement that about 50 million mu (3.3 hectares) of arable land in China is too polluted for farming.